72TB of Simultaneous Access via Xsan & Xserve & XRAID

Posted Aug 9th 2006 3:26PM by Josh Oakhurst
Filed under: Trends, Business, Production, Editing, Hardware, Software, Gear, Television, Pro, Marketing

Ever wonder what a rack of 11 Xserve RAIDs and 5 Xserves looks like? This picture to the left certainly does not do justice to the IT networking marvel that is Xsan and Xserve at the JWT advertising agency HQ in New York.

Looking for a an in-house post solution, the agency dropped a huge amount of cash on a post inventory that now includes (get this list): 35 Power Mac G5s, 5 Xserves, 11 Xserve RAIDs, 7 QLogic fiber channel switches, 3 Asante CAT 5 switches, 1 Cisco CAT 6 switch, 16 AJA Kona LHe cards, 4 AJA Kona 2 Cards, 40 Apple Cinema Dislplays, 25 iMacs, and 15 Power Mac G4s.

Daaaaaaagggg, ya'll - and I thought working with two G5s and two XRAIDs at SportsHD was cool. How many other companies in the world do you think can compete with JWT's Apple-centric post infrastructure?

Check out this insightful JWT profile for more details.

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1. "How many other companies in the world do you think can compete with JWT's post infrastructure?"

Hundreds, that I can think of. However, JOT probably has the largest Mac setup.

Posted at 5:10PM on Aug 9th 2006 by Targ8ter

2. Targ8ter

I did amend the post to reflect the MAC-centric environment, and while there may be hundreds of companies all over the world with that kind of IT infrastructure, do you really believe there are hundreds of broadcast/ film/ animation post facilities with that kind of gear - proprietary, MAC, or otherwise?

72TB of simultaneous storage access? 100's of facilities? I don't think so. Throw up a short list.

Posted at 5:51PM on Aug 9th 2006 by Josh Oakhurst

3. Well, there's the big guys, like ILM (http://www.itbusinessedge.com/item/?ci=7549), Digital Domain, Imageworks, Weta (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/3672887.stm), and other with absolutely gigantic networks, and there are the super-tiny players like the last studio I worked at (12 animators - 40 PCs, 60TB), and plenty of those in between, like The Mill, Embassy, Blur, Hybride, Valve, Psyop... all of whom run impressive setups; some with Macs, but PCs are used almost exclusively for servers and renderfarms. That's not even counting all the TV stations themselves, most of whome have gigantic storage solutions for playout, and very speedy networks for production.

There are plenty of storage experts like Isilon (http://www.isilon.com/customers/) who will talk about the storage networks they've built. Inspiring stuff, really.

Posted at 7:07PM on Aug 9th 2006 by Targ8ter

72TB of Simultaneous Access via Xsan & Xserve & XRAID

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